Noah Pickus Named Director of Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke

Following a national search, Duke University has selected Noah Pickus as the new Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, effective July 1, Provost Peter Lange announced Monday.

Pickus is widely recognized for his scholarship and policy work on immigration, citizenship and national identity and has served as the interim director of the institute since July 1, 2006. He will succeed founding director Elizabeth Kiss, who announced last May that she would accept the presidency of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., after 10 years in her position.

Pickus, 42, joined Duke's faculty in 1996 as an assistant professor of public policy. He left in 2002 to direct the Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University in collaboration with Gov. Jim Hunt. In 2004, Pickus returned to Duke to be the Kenan Institute for Ethics' associate director and to teach at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. In 2006, he was appointed adjunct professor at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

"Noah has been an essential part of the Kenan Institute for Ethics' success over the past three years," said Lange, Duke's chief academic officer. "He combines a deep understanding of scholarship with entrepreneurial energy and has forged collaborative relations with schools and departments across the university. President (Richard H.) Brodhead and I are confident that Noah is the ideal leader for the institute as it continues its work to infuse ethics into the fabric of the university and beyond."

Pickus said he is honored to be selected and "delighted to have the opportunity to lead the institute into its second decade of work as a national model for ethical inquiry and practice."

The Kenan Institute for Ethics is a university-wide initiative that supports the study, teaching and infusion of ethics at Duke and in higher education, K-12 and business. Its mission is to promote moral reflection and commitment, to build shared purpose in organizational cultures and to develop ethical approaches to civic and global challenges.

During his tenure, Pickus has developed and expanded the institute's business ethics program, launched a university-wide research initiative on "Changing Institutional Cultures" and led the graduate colloquium in ethics. In fall 2005, he led a collaborative process to develop the institute's new strategic plan.

In 2005, he published "True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism" (Princeton University Press), which examines nationalism and the politics of immigration. He writes extensively on issues of immigration, citizenship and national identity and has advised the Department of Homeland Security, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and other public and private organizations.

At Duke, Pickus teaches courses on ethics and public policy and on immigration and citizenship, and delivers short courses on ethics and leadership to student, business, engineering and non-profit groups. Prior to coming to Duke, he taught at Middlebury College in Vermont. Pickus received his Ph.D. from Princeton and was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in South Africa.

Pickus is married to Trudi Abel, the director of the Digital Durham Project at Duke. They have two children.